The GRID vGPU Manager and Windows guest VM drivers must be installed together. Older VM drivers will not function correctly with this release of GRID vGPU Manager. Similarly, older GRID vGPU Managers will not function correctly with this release of Windows guest drivers

Windows Guest OS support in NVIDIA vGPU 6.3 – 392.05

GRID vGPU 392.05 supports following Windows release as a guest OS

Microsoft Windows 7 (32/64bit)

Microsoft Windows 8 (32/64bit)

Microsoft Windows 8.1 (32/64bit)

Microsoft Windows 10 (32/64bit) (1507, 1511, 1607, 1703, 1709)

Microsoft Windows Server 2008R2

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2

Microsoft Windows Server 2016 (1607, 1709)

Linux Guest OS support in NVIDIA vGPU 6.3 – 390.96

GRID vGPU 390.96 supports following Linux distributions as a guest OS only on supported Tesla GPUs

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0-7.5

CentOS 7.0-7.5

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Important driver notes to NVIDIA vGPU 6.3

In pass-through mode, GPUs based on the Pascal architecture support only 64-bit guest operating systems. No 32-bit guest operating systems are supported in pass-through mode for these GPUs.

ESXi 5.5 is only supported with Pass-through and not vGPU

ESXi 6.0 Update 3 is required for pass-through mode on GPUs based on the Pascal architecture.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are not supported in pass-through mode on GPUs based on the Pascal architecture.

Only Tesla M6 is supported as the primary display device in a bare-metal deployment.

The recommendation from NVIDIA is to shutdown all VMs using a GPU. The machine does continue to work during the update, but since you need to reboot the XenServer itself, it’s better to gracefully shutdown the VMs. So after your VMs have been shutdown and you upgraded the NVIDIA driver, you can reboot your host.

[root@localhost ~]# xe host-disable

[root@localhost ~]# xe host-reboot

Methodology 2 – the “GUI” way

Select Install Update… from the Tools menu
 Click Next after going through the instructions on the Before You Start section
 Click Add on the Select Update section and open NVIDIA’s XenServer Supplemental Pack ISO

If you have NVIDIA M6/M10/M60/P4/P6/P40/P100/V100 select following file:

Click Next on the Select Update section
 In the Select Servers section select all the XenServer hosts on which the Supplemental Pack should be installed on and click Next
 Click Next on the Upload section once the Supplemental Pack has been uploaded to all the XenServer hosts
Getting Started
 Click Next on the Prechecks section
 Click Install Update on the Update Mode section
 Click Finish on the Install Update section

After the XenServer platform has rebooted, verify that the vGPU package installed and loaded correctly by checking for the NVIDIA kernel driver in the list of kernel loaded modules.

Validate from putty or XenCenter CLI

run lsmod | grep nvidia

Verify that the NVIDIA kernel driver can successfully communicate with the vGPU physical GPUs in your system by running the nvidia-smi command, which should produce a listing of the GPUs in your platform:

Check driver version is 390.94, if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.

NVIDIA vGPU Manager 390.94 for Citrix XenServer 7.5 or 7.6

If you have a NVIDIA vGPU M6, M10, M60, P4, P6, P40, P100 vGPU manager installed in Citrix XenServer. Upgrade with one of below methodology:

Methodology 1 – the manual way “No GUI”

Upgrading an existing installation of the NVIDIA driver on Citrix XenServer 7.6, use the rpm -U command to upgrade:

The recommendation from NVIDIA is to shutdown all VMs using a GPU. The machine does continue to work during the update, but since you need to reboot the XenServer itself, it’s better to gracefully shutdown the VMs. So after your VMs have been shutdown and you upgraded the NVIDIA driver, you can reboot your host.

[root@localhost ~]# xe host-disable

[root@localhost ~]# xe host-reboot

Methodology 2 – the “GUI” way

Select Install Update… from the Tools menu
 Click Next after going through the instructions on the Before You Start section
 Click Add on the Select Update section and open NVIDIA’s XenServer Supplemental Pack ISO

If you have NVIDIA GRID M6/ M10/M60/P4/P6/P40/P100/V100 select following file:

“NVIDIA-vGPU-xenserver-7.5-390.94.x86_64.iso ” if XenServer 7.5

“NVIDIA-vGPU-xenserver-7.6-390.94.x86_64.iso ” if XenServer 7.6

Click Next on the Select Update section
 In the Select Servers section select all the XenServer hosts on which the Supplemental Pack should be installed on and click Next
 Click Next on the Upload section once the Supplemental Pack has been uploaded to all the XenServer hosts
Getting Started
 Click Next on the Prechecks section
 Click Install Update on the Update Mode section
 Click Finish on the Install Update section

After the XenServer platform has rebooted, verify that the GRID package installed and loaded correctly by checking for the NVIDIA kernel driver in the list of kernel loaded modules.

Validate from putty or XenCenter CLI

run lsmod | grep nvidia

Verify that the NVIDIA kernel driver can successfully communicate with the GRID physical GPUs in your system by running the nvidia-smi command, which should produce a listing of the GPUs in your platform:

Check driver version is 390.94, if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.

GRID vGPU Manager 390.94 for VMware vSphere 6.0

To update the NVIDIA GPU VIB, you must uninstall the currently installed VIB and install the new VIB.

After the ESXi host has rebooted, verify that the GRID package installed and loaded correctly by checking for the NVIDIA kernel driver in the list of kernel loaded modules.

[root@lesxi ~]# vmkload_mod -l | grep nvidia

Preparing packages for installation…

Validate

run nvidia-smi

Verify that the NVIDIA kernel driver can successfully communicate with the GRID physical GPUs in your system by running the nvidia-smi command, which should produce a listing of the GPUs in your platform:

Check driver version is 390.94 if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.

GRID vGPU Manager 390.94 for VMware vSphere 6.5

To update the NVIDIA GPU VIB, you must uninstall the currently installed VIB and install the new VIB.

After the ESXi host has rebooted, verify that the GRID package installed and loaded correctly by checking for the NVIDIA kernel driver in the list of kernel loaded modules.

[root@lesxi ~]# vmkload_mod -l | grep nvidia

Preparing packages for installation…

Validate

run nvidia-smi

Verify that the NVIDIA kernel driver can successfully communicate with the GRID physical GPUs in your system by running the nvidia-smi command, which should produce a listing of the GPUs in your platform:

Check driver version is 390.94 if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.

GRID vGPU Manager 390.94 for VMware vSphere 6.7

To update the NVIDIA GPU VIB, you must uninstall the currently installed VIB and install the new VIB.

After the ESXi host has rebooted, verify that the GRID package installed and loaded correctly by checking for the NVIDIA kernel driver in the list of kernel loaded modules.

[root@lesxi ~]# vmkload_mod -l | grep nvidia

Preparing packages for installation…

Validate

run nvidia-smi

Verify that the NVIDIA kernel driver can successfully communicate with the NVIDIA physical GPUs in your system by running the nvidia-smi command, which should produce a listing of the GPUs in your platform:

Check driver version is 390.94 if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.

Update existing NVIDIA vGPU Driver for (Virtual Machine)

When the hypervisor NVIDIA vGPU manager is updated, next is updating the Virtual Machines vGPU driver.

The vGPU driver for Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 is available with NVIDIA GRID vGPU download. This is available for both M6/M10/M60/P4/P6/P40/P100/V100

Update your Golden Images and reprovisioning the new virtual machines with updated vGPU drivers, if you have stateless machines update vGPU drivers on each.

#HINT – Express upgrade of drivers is the recommended option according to the setup. If you use the “Custom” option, you will have the option to do a “clean” installation. The downside of the “clean installation” is that it will remove all profiles and custom settings. The pro of using the clean installation option is that it will reinstall the complete driver, meaning that there will be no old driver files left on the system. I most of the time recommends using a “Clean” installation to keep it vanilla 🙂

The NVIDIA vGPU API provides direct access to the frame buffer of the GPU, providing the fastest possible frame rate for a smooth and interactive user experience. If you install NVIDIA drivers before you install a VDA with HDX 3D Pro, NVIDIA vGPU is enabled by default.

To enable NVIDIA vGPU on a VM, disable Microsoft Basic Display Adapter from the Device Manager. Run the following command and then restart the VDA: NVFBCEnable.exe -enable -noreset

If you install NVIDIA drivers after you install a VDA with HDX 3D Pro, NVIDIA vGPU is disabled. Enable NVIDIA vGPU by using the NVFBCEnable tool provided by NVIDIA.

To disable NVIDIA vGPU, run the following command and then restart the VDA: NVFBCEnable.exe -disable -noreset